Show me a school where the power, freedom, and time to learn are in the hands and hearts of the learners--learners being both the kids and the adults--and I'll show you a curious, caring learning community; a thriving school culture!
Bottom line: Until EDUCATORS EXPERIENCE leading their own professional learning, they will have a hard time ceding traditional control of learning to the STUDENTS.
A building of Shiny Happy Teachers, learners on fire, is what every school needs!!

My Flickr Gallery

Monday, October 28, 2013

TweetOur school's cancer awareness fundraiser was a positive and moving experience because it involved teachers and students working together in FUN for a good CAUSE. Purpose, people!

Ms. Lloyd!

The orchestrator was this lady right here, Ms. Lloyd! She worked tireless hours on this and it happened because of her drive and vision to DO IT. It was a school-wide effort but thanks to her passion and drive it HAPPENED!

Teachers and kids want this to be an annual event. Perhaps at an #edcampNewMark one of the teachers (or kids?) will write this down as a session and work it from there.

Here's how the hour-long assembly was set up!

**Anyone in our school learning community could buy tickets at a dollar each throughout the week leading up to it. The assembly took place in the gym and outside the gym on the blacktop from 8:10-9:10 am.

"100% of proceeds will be donated in an equal split between Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer."

**Buying a raffle ticket earned kids the chance to be picked to do one of the following activities to a teacher during the assembly:

Pie a teacher in the face--9 teachers signed up for this

Flour-bomb a teacher--8 teachers signed up

Escort a male teacher in a dress--7 teachers

Shave a teacher's head--2 teachers

Cut a teacher's hair for Locks of Love--4 teachers, 1 student signed up!

**The Raffle drawings took place the the afternoon before the assembly: Winning students for each of the activities were announced via intercom. They went to the Commons for a quick meeting with Ms. Lloyd about how the fun was going to unfold the next day. :)

The next day the gym was filled with 'us' and with music and applause, and laughs and smiles. Tarps all over one corner of the gym. The events simply played out, one after the other. We ended outside with the flour bombs. All this fun was to help raise awareness of and funding for a serious disease that has affected so many of us.

The Beauty of Flickr: Coach Porras took many of the pictures and we uploaded them to my Flickr account (via our shared Dropbox picture folder). Students who took pictures sent them to my Flickr email address. Once in Flickr they can be edited, tagged, commented on, and ultimately shared.

Instead of keeping this event and celebration within our school learning community, we can share it via pictures on Flickr, blogposts, and tweets. LEARNING OUT LOUD to share with others our day and our experience. Here's to more sharing and caring between connected learners!

Friday, October 25, 2013

So how do you do a vertical panorama?!

I stood in the MIDDLE of the Pin Oak and Red Maple you see below.The trees are actually very close together. You can't see much of the sky in between them.

I selected Pano on my iPhone 5, turned my phone on its side, then SCANNED up into the sky….. from the ground UP the trunk of one tree to the top and then down the trunk of the other tree to the ground again.

Voila.

I took at least 6 panos trying to get the arc just right so that the trees were straight on the top and bottom. LOL Going SLOW was the key.

Suggestions straight from the Nelson educators about how to implement VTS with your students is pictured below.

And the story begins.....

So there I was signed up to take ------->
...at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Date: October 17, 2013. Time: 6:30-8:00pm. Wasn't sure what to expect. I was excited about it, though. A nice byproduct of having #edcampKC at the Nelson is that I've needed to explore it so I'm familiar and can set up experiences educators can learn and grow from on Nov 9th and beyond. I belong to the museum now and am spending more and more time there by choice and desire.

The clipboards!At 6:30 pm, the Nelson-Atkins instructors welcomed us talked to the 25 educators in attendance about VTS strategies as a way to get kids immersed in art and developing their inquiry and verbal skills.

Adrienne then took us, along with our darling cardboard clipboards, to a gallery room to EXPERIENCE VTS! ----->

Here we go from our classroom in the Ford Learning Center (right in the middle of where we'll be for #edcampKC) down the hall and up the stairs to the heart of the art!

We arrive in the room with our focus piece of art, a piece by Max Breckmann called "Baccarat." It's to the left of the center of this picture.

We all assemble around the artwork and our wonderful VTS leader, Adrienne.(Adrienne, by the way, has been instrumental in making #edcampKC a reality at the Nelson. She is truly an art educator extraordinaire and I am happy to be working with and learning from her.)

This is what Adrienne and the Nelson-Atkins instructors let us experience. Adrienne led us through this masterfully and then asked us for our feedback; about how the process felt to us.

Off topic but artsy: I used Flickr's Splash editor to pop the art out of the black and white version.This is Adrienne in action--a quiet VTS kind of action. :)Art: "Baccarat" by Max Breckmann

"What do you think is going on in this picture? What do you notice?"

"What do you see that makes you say that?"

"What MORE can you find?" (Instead of, "What else can you find?")

Adrienne validated our responses and clarified using art terms what we saw. She did not say, "Good job" or "That's right." She honored this open-ended inquiry process, this jumping-into-a-picture activity. She let us interact with it---TOGETHER.My thoughts during the process

When I originally looked at the piece of art I found myself doubting. Inner dialogue went something like this....."I don't know art terms. I'm not an artist." (Got a B- on a self-portrait I did in 3rd grade. I was really proud of that thing. I still remember that feeling. It hurt.) Anyway, I also found myself thinking for a moment, "What is she looking for in this question?" No, no, no. That's what school is too often about and we get used to it; living apart from our own thinking. Learning becomes about what OTHERS want us to think, find, learn.So the first hand goes up in our VTS exercise around "Baccarat." This person says something I hadn't thought of, and once she said it my brain had something to feed off of. The next person went and that person's comment fed off the first comment. The world was expanding for all of us, with each shared view. It went on and on. I'd say about 8 people added to our collaborative view of this artwork. I am much richer for interacting with that piece of art--IN A GROUP of curious learners. Now, every time I go to the Nelson and go in that room, I will have a great memory AND I feel like I have a sort of kinship with that piece of art. VERY STRANGE and COOL at the same time. Powerful.

When Adrienne asked us to share our reactions to VTS...

We felt safe in responding and sharing our observations, thoughts.

It wasn't about who could get the 'right' answer or who had it 'wrong.'

We learned from each other's comments and it made us 'see' things we wouldn't have otherwise seen

It felt positive and non-judgmental

It opened us up to looking at art (an other things) in a new way. We also heard new words, terms, and were curious about Baccarat and what the picture really WAS about. All with a few quiet minutes of observation and group inquiry/sharing.

Okay, so onto the SCIENCE and ART idea I heard Adrienne talking about.

Adrienne said a Science educator she knows uses Pieces of ART and then pictures to kick off her units. They spend time using VTS methods for open inquiry with the art and pictures to create common building blocks in the kids' minds that all future learning in the unit (and beyond) will stack upon.

Mind blown. Of course. I've never used famous art as a kickoff for any unit. I've never used art systemically at all. I know far too little about art and well, I can't wait to change this reality for myself. I have this new world to pursue and explore; one that I think is EXCELLENT for kids and for all learning communities. :)

My next Nelson-Atkins educator class is in November, the week after #edcampKC. The classes beginning in January merge STEM with Art...for STEAM. Educators, sign up here.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Photo created at MOREnet conference, Oct 14, 2013;sent to my Flickr email address to build a group photo-story.

This is one of the photos created by educators in my Picture Perfect session at the MOREnet conference on October 14, 2013. Mike took this picture of me during our time together, edited it with the WordFoto app (which several of us then downloaded 'cause we liked it), and EMAILED it to my Flickr email address.

How to find your Flickr email: Hover over your picture in upper right, click on Settings, and click on Emails and Notifications. Cool thing: You can CHANGE your Flickr email. If you give a group your email or tweet out the email, no worries about people having YOUR Flickr email address and photo-bombing you so to speak. :) You can change it whenever you want.

Growing this idea at #EdcampKC in the perfect place and event for visual group storytelling.

Taking this same idea on a bigger scale to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for #edcampKC on Nov 9th. We will build a group-created Flickr set from all of us. We'll be able to see our day at the Nelson-Atkins through 300 eyes (ok, 600) --instead of just 2. Through 300 minds, visions, hearts.

During EdcampKC 2012, I took the pictures and made a Flickr set. I added a few pics from other people; mostly just my 'views.'

This year--everyone that wants to can build our Flickr set into something big, bold, and beautiful that can be used with kids, the museum, with educators. They can edit the pictures that day in the many beautiful spaces in the museum, in the auditorium during photo sessions and at home during the next few days.

I can't wait to see the beauty and the stories to unfold before our eyes....

Sunday, October 6, 2013

After doing Workshop Model unit planning this summer with +Sam Bennett and working off Cris Tovani's use of a Roundtable event in her classroom, I set a Scientist Roundtable idea as a goal for our 6th graders near the end of 1st quarter. Bounced idea off of Sam and coach +Jamie Neibling and went from there. I work with 3 energetic and FUN/BRILLIANT 6th grade science educators, a.k.a. co-conspirators who also wanted to run with it. I contacted Patty Dailey, Program Director at Science Pioneers, to help us find scientists for this event. She gave me a list of science mentors to contact.We sent out an invite (created a Smore form) with an embedded google form to about 30 KC scientists on the Science Pioneers science mentor list, and to our 6th grade parents, asking them to give us leads. We had about 12 scientists show up in the morning and 12 in the afternoon, ~3-4 per classroom. (Note to KC area educators: Science Pioneers is working to get the scientist mentor list live and accessible on the web to educators in early 2014, with easy scheduling options! Contact Science Pioneers with any questions.)

The outstanding local scientists that came to share with my lucky and happy kids:

THANK YOU, local science community of KC, for your time, knowledge, and love of learning! You impacted our kids' minds and hearts today. :)

Takeaways from the Scientist Roundtable event:

1. Power of CONVERSATION--the power of stories and the chance for kids to be active participants, talking WITH real scientists and being able to ask them questions when the questions hit 'em in the brain as important and necessary to know!

Writing in their SmashJournals
in their own format/style.

Writing her notes, her way.

2. Power of IDEAS and PEOPLE and EXPRESSION over facts and tests to foster love of learning and lifelong learning--The common goal of both kids AND scientists on Friday was to get smarter and share with each other their knowledge, questions, wonders...and a little piece of themselves, which is most precious.

Result: Amazing day that the kids ENJOYED. Autographs were asked for!! At 3:00 the kids were still going strong and only left due to bell and buses.

Result: Already hatching plans to work with most of the scientists in our upcoming units. The kids will contact them if they want their help in crafting awesome learning experiences..and I know they will. The scientists were gung-ho about it.

**We educators need to deliberately reach out to and plan with community resources, especially people, in mind. We can do a better job of that. There is great untapped power in connecting kids to people and resources in the community. I know there is much more I can do. Organizations that arrange for scientists to work with kids on a regular basis, gently mentoring and extending a big arm

If we get kids DOING the work of scientists WITH scientists, we're setting kids up to ENJOY science. We DO things we enjoy. Too few kids even consider going into science because they know so little about jobs and possibilities out there in the world. We have to let kids get curious and find out through talk and interaction.

I have learned this very lesson from setting up events for #edcampKC---JUST ASK!! You just have to ask. People really do like and WANT to do things for kids/educators/learning. The thing is....we don't ask 'em!

Watch the kids and the Scientists. Why haven't I done more of this connecting kids to the community?! Lookout, community, 'cause here we come for ya. It won't just be me this time; the kids will be seeking you out, too. :)

Pep talk: The posters are off our walls for a reason. The challenge for us: Splash these walls with OUR 'paint!' Create our OWN posters with US and/or OUR work in them.The kids accepted the challenge as worthy and noble and set off with great fervor, finding PhotoBooth a keen source of inspiration and possibility.Kids figured how to add text and make collages with no iPad editing apps:

Add text to pictures and make collages in Keynote/Pages; take a screenshot picture

**Then EMAIL the pictures to my Flickr account -- the address on the board.**

We watched the pictures pop up on my Flickr page on the projector screen as kids emailed them from their iPads and school email accounts.

Nifty: I can edit the pictures they send into Flickr with the built-in editor, Aviary--adding effects, frames, and text to any picture. (Students can type into the email what text they want me to add!) Then I can share the pictures to social media or use the available html code for blogposts. :)

When the first posters get printed in about a week or two (when more poster paper comes in), the kids' views of what a learning community 'is' and 'can be' will enlarge. They'll be surrounded by all posters (motivational, anchor charts for content) created with their smarts; by them and arranged by them. No more 'teacher store' consumption for our walls. Okay, perhaps consumption of ideas but creation of our own products!

The big questions we're considering as we learn this year:

CREATE vs CONSUME? Is learning all about consuming?

When is it about consuming? When should it be about creating?

Should there be more of one? Which one? Why?!

One student made a tantalizing comment the next day as we worked further on the project. "We should do this same thing out in the school. Cover the walls with posters and pictures from everyone!"BRILLIANT! YES!

These are some of the first posters to be finalized for printing and laminating! Enjoy the kids' work!(Click on the pictures to go to my Flickr photo stream.)

#EdcampKC!

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About Me

KC Educator & Instructional Coach Turner HS who believes. I work w/passionate people in KC, KS & MO to get education right for kids. Building community & capacity online at #KCedu #KSedchat #MOedchat and face-to-face #EdcampLDR#edcampKC